Eeny meeny miny mo. A more acceptable version has now established itself: Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, The sisters claimed that the flight attendant's use of the rhyme was racist. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. MARTIN: Poet Adrienne Raphel. Ting, tay, tong, I understand that one of the earlier versions of the rhyme included a racial slur. Eeny Meeny Miny Mo Image Credit: Pexels Children all over the world use a variation of this childhood chant, most often used, in America, to decide who will be "it" in a game like tag. But these songs, can teach us about our past. I could remeber working for Califonia Department of Forestry in 1985 at Ryan Air field Hemet Ca. In some Dutch versions Ene, mine, mike, maken.. Catch an nigger by the toe. They heard versions in Zimbabwe. If they squeal make them squeal some more. And no, subbing in monkeys and making the rhymes less deadly isnt innocent, says Kansas State University English professor Philip Nel. The words: "Eenie, meenie, minie mo. 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' is certainly a strange line, so does it mean anything and does curiosity about its origin lead us anywhere? All rights reserved. Susanna", the slave is depicted as too dumb to realize his situation and or grasp the concept of geography that's more of the "slaves as property" portrayal. And then the words that recognized take on a life of their own. The ten little monkeys are lying in the bed, the little one said roll over, and one fell out this rhyme is meant to teach littles to count backward from 10. But studying these songs within the proper context suggests the songs represent more than may appear at first listen. In the early-mid 1800s, the rhyme could be found in Europe and the US. RAPHEL: An earlier version of the rhyme that children recited on playgrounds did include a racial slur sometimes. It starts with a group of nonsense syllables and ends with a phrase that will indicate the games goal. In other musical instances, this is not the case. $MMT = window.$MMT || {}; $MMT.cmd = $MMT.cmd || [];$MMT.cmd.push(function(){ $MMT.display.slots.push(["6e36601e-44cf-4f78-b804-bfbdde6ee2e3"]); }). Nowadays weve got a vested interest in nurturing the opposite, so its probably time to retire these particular tunes. Counting off has always been a way to group and identify things. ", The black plaintiffs in that case sued the airline for discrimination because a flight attendant had used the rhyme while urging them to take their seats. The meaning: The meaning of this rhyme is rooted in the slave trade. Put the baby on the po. Father, husband, dog person. (one version of several; they also chant the US variation above), France: In 2004, two African-American sisters filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines after a flight attendant tried to rush them into choosing a seat saying, Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, pick a seat, we gotta go.. Israeli/British. Bolton identifies the first line as plain gibberish. Its possible children tried all sorts of nonsensical sounds and rhythms until they found one they liked: Nevertheless, there are as many theories as to the origin of. There isnt any evidence to back up this theory, which basically means that a term used by African slaves was used by white children in a racist song mocking them. "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe" Lyrics Eeny, meeny, miny, moe Catch a tiger by the toe Wash your hands afterwards. Each syllable counts a child from a circle, and the game round finishes with the last kid pointed out. The meaning: The vocabulary used by lyricist Stephen Foster is meant to mimic black speech. The, "Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Related entries. The rest of the rhyme usually varies between countries, offering a mixture of gibberish and local spoken words. In the song, the singer can't grasp the ideas of temperature and geography. Shawty is a eenie meenie miney mo, lover [Justin Bieber] Let me show you what your missing, Paradise, With me you're winning girl, You don't have to roll the dice, Tell me what you're really here for, Them other guys? Parental Alienation (PA) is the outcome of one parent (the alienating parent) using Parental Alienating Behaviours (PABs) to damage the relationship between their child and the child's other parent (the targeted parent). [Note: UK residents who voted in the May 2011 referendum might notice a parallel with the 'First Past the Post' and 'Alternative Vote' systems.]. The lyrics of the song include one about the ole massa gone away, and have been terrorizing Black children for centuries. [citation needed]. I shut my eyes to hold my brefSusanna, dont you cry. MARTIN: Is it fair to call it a song? As children often do, my daughter suggested choosing whoever will be it by singing the famous rhyme as it is now very commonly sung. In more important choices - selecting who has to ask that grumpy man down the road for their ball back - the one pointed to last drops out and the formula is repeated several times until only one is left. And his story raised awareness among his readers. Vis, vos, vay. A little over a week ago, NPR had an illuminating and poignant report on the the racist beginnings of the ice cream truck song. Joe Biden is pretty good at being president. What's its historyboth good and bad? The first line in the version sung in Cornwall, England was Eeha, meena, mona, mite. Following by different variations of if he squeals/screams/hollers and then let him go/make him pay/send him hum. The meaning: The protagonist of the song is an African-American slave who is portrayed as dumb and naive. "Its well known that theres some challenging language in the Gospel of John," Michael Marissen, a noted Bach scholar, said in a 2013 interview with WQXR-radio. "Do I empower them with the history of our country, or encourage the youthful exuberance induced by the ice cream truck? Manage Settings MARTIN: Can you find it in other languages or is this exclusively something that lives in English? Since many similar counting-out rhymes existed earlier, it is difficult to know its exact origin. Its well known that theres some challenging language in the Gospel of John,". Lets take a look at some of them. You Cant Use These English Words In The UK, Understanding Black History: 10 Terms That Illuminate The Black Experience In The US, The Names Of Black Panther And Wakanda: Their Meaning And Significance. Catch a racist by the toe. Eje, veje, vaek. Some theories outlined below take a stab at the American chants birthplace. Warning: We are talking about racism in this article. "BasketBall, Watermelon, Cadillac cars, we aint as dumb as you think we..is". Eeny, meeny, miny, moe is part of a large collection of Counting-out rhymes, used in playground games, since the early 19th century. If he hollers, let him go. According to Vox, the 19th century American version of the nursery rhyme was rooted in the slave trade. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. There's also another version that goes. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Ene, tene, mone, mei, eeny, meeny, miny, moe ( uncountable ) A method of choosing between two or more people or things, used by children. [3], Iona and Peter Opie pointed out in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) that the word "nigger" was common in American folklore, but unknown in any English traditional rhyme or proverb.[3]. A new intersectional publication, geared towards voices, values, and identities! Eeny meeny miny mo. And that then caused a lot of entomologists to do kind of back formations, and say, well, because it had this racial slur, we think it may have had all of these other, you know, African American origins and all of this stuff with it. Endendino, en-den-di-no. That being said, it's almost impossible to track down the true origin of "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo." In the 1950s, a Dutch language historian proposed that the first line Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moecomes from anne manne miene mukke, the first line of an ancient heathen priest song in which the chanter supplicates the high priestess for a divine sign about who should live or die. Dutch? Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe Despite language differences, the first lines of each version are remarkably alike. You seem like the type To love them and leave them And disappear right after the song. Eenie, meenie, minie mo." You know? She wrote about eeny meeny miny mo for The Paris Review. Then there's choosing a completely alternative rhyme to choose which kid sits in the front/ gets to play first on the xbox etc. Wo? I love writing about what I love. RAPHEL: I'd say it's somewhere between a poem and a song and a chant because it's hard not to do it. I'm gay you're gay he's gay she's. Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. What is known is that countless variations of the nursery rhyme exist. Whenever I hear the music now, the antique voice laughing about niggers and watermelon fills my head," Johnson wrote. Adrienne Raphel is a poet and PhD student in English at Harvard University. One white member would read jokes out loud in front of the whole team. I promised to do some research and get back to them. Gotta jump down, turn around, Oh, Lordie, pick a bale a day." I'm gay you're gay he's gay she's. intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, "eeny-meeny-miney-mo - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com", "Childhood nursery rhymes and other 'classic' songs you probably never knew were racist", "Missing text can contain the true message", "Jeremy Clarkson: I didn't mean to use N-word video| News | The Week UK", "Jeremy Clarkson 'begs forgiveness' over N-word footage | Media", "Primark pulls "shocking" and "racist" Walking Dead t-shirt from stores after Sheffield man's angry complaint", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe&oldid=1141869865, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, A jocular use of a form of the rhyme by a, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 07:39. If he hollers let him go, Eenie Meenie by Sean Kingston & Justin Bieber song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position . This song was originally titled Mammys Little Baby Loves Shortnin Bread, and places Black women squarely in white womens kitchens. In my search, I stumbled upon the book The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children: A Study of Folk-Lore by Henry Carrington Bolton. The Itis Catch an [N-word] by the toe ADRIENNE RAPHEL: Yan, tan, tehtera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera - so you can kind of hear the eeny meeny miny mo in it, right? Another is that it associates Asians with either poor hygiene or subservience. Folklorists, too, went on the playgrounds to study what these kids were singing. Players: 3 Girls Age: 9-11. Johnson's piece got us thinking about the songs like the ice cream truck song a seemingly innocuous folk song, nursery rhyme, or jingle that we may not have known were racist, and what we should do when we learn about their histories. Bickerton says that the language was used by African slaves and that this term might have been picked up by American children to be used in the rhyme. MARTIN: So how did it morph? Years later, in 1982, linguist Derek Bickerton proposed a theory that Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe was actually a distorted version of an African phrase. We've all taken advantage of the quirky nursery rhyme, "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe." But what does the ditty mean? Definitions by the largest Idiom Dictionary. Of all of the phrases and idioms in the English language 'eeny, meenie, miny, mo' must be the one with the widest variety of spellings. You're playing a game, and it's time to figure out who goes first. Sometimes the child pointed to at the end of one count is the one selected - to be 'It' in a game of hide and seek, for example. I had to sit there and hear their prejudice jokes. In 2004, two African-American sisters sued Southwest Airlines for discrimination on the basis of the nursery rhyme. newsletter. Doo-dah!/ I come down dah wid my hat caved in Doo-dah! A group of kids gets together to play a game of tag and nobody wants to be it. The children dont suddenly slip into chaos trying to decide who it is going to bethey possess a rhythmic selection procedure, parts of which have probably been around in some form for centuries. The second line in the American rhyme, Catch a tiger by the toe, has a clearer and more dismal ancestry that traces right back to the United States. On the Wikipedia page Talk: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, the editors of the rhymes Wiki page were discussing the issue: At school in North London 197278 we used the n***** version, without any ill intention; it was just part of the rhyme, mentioned one of the editors. There are considerable variations in the lyrics of the rhyme, including from the early twentieth century in the United States of America: During the Second World War, an AP dispatch from Atlanta, Georgia reported: "Atlanta children were heard reciting this wartime rhyme: A distinct version of the rhyme in the United Kingdom, collected in the 1950s & 1960s, is: There are many scenes in books, films, plays, cartoons and video games in which a variant of "Eeny meeny " is used by a character who is making a choice, either for serious or comic effect. Catch a mouse by the toe; The stories we learn from them are painful, but also valuable. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe Une, mine, mane, mo, Bach's St. John Passion, for instance, is set to anti-semitic text. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe"which can be spelled a number of waysis a children's counting-out rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag, or for selecting various other things. The best known version of the rhyme is the one that is now widely derided as insulting, especially in the USA, where the middle two lines originated: Eena, meena, mina, mo,Catch a n*gger by the toe,If he hollers, let him go,Eena meena, mina, mo. "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" (sometimes written as "moe") has been chanted and beloved by children on playgrounds for centuries. Walk us through the journey of this rhyme. Some of these are obvious, others not so much! The song was written by both Kingston and Bieb read more justin bieber pop eenie meenie Add tags View all tags Play album Replace video Featured On My World 2.0 Justin Bieber 710,941 listeners "It's become clear to scholars that blackface/ minstrels were really the North's only exposure for what was going in the South," Shaftel says, explaining that while these shows were racist and terrible, they were trying to portray some semblance of reality of what life was like in the South. Ban them? An example comes from the Danish region near Kattegat, where the Jack and Jill rhyme, which arrived during the British occupation in the Napoleonic wars, was repeated as: Jeck og JillVent op de hillOg Jell kom tombling efter. Catch an nigger by the toe. Brad Pitt was the only winner of the Aniston-Jolie tabloid battle, Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword, Make Trump a non person: Rupert Murdochs Ron DeSantis pivot, explained by a legal filing, The Supreme Court will decide if a whole federal agency is unconstitutional, Sign up for the T he American version became so prominent that it spread all over the world, and was still sung years later. But it's really hard to - and the history of it is much more complicated than that because the sounds in this rhyme are really sticky. The poem has many versions used in different regions, but the roots consistently make clear references to slavery and discrimination of Black people. Furthermore, another theory describes how slave traders would pinch or pull a slave's toe before purchasing them (via An Injustice). Compare Dutch iene miene mutte German ene mene mu. American in origin or English? If he hollers, let him go. Notably, the rhyme has been used by killers to choose victims in the 1994 films Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers,[24][25] the 2003 film Elephant,[26] and the sixth-season finale of the television series The Walking Dead. The Racist History of Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe. Hahaha.. Who does that Had to be a deep rooted odd fixation in the mind of the song writer'.. Atlanta Black Star is a narrative company. [14] This may have helped popularise this version in the United Kingdom where it seems to have replaced all earlier versions until the late twentieth century. At School 05. A more acceptable version has now established itself: Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,Catch the tiger/monkey/baby by the toe.If it hollers[USA]/screams[UK] let him go,Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. Eena, meena, mina, mo, It was used in the chorus of Bert Fitzgibbon's 1906 song "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo": Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, Catch a nigger by his toe, If he won't work then let him go; Skidum, skidee, skidoo. My mother told me And, this particular rhyme isnt only found in the US; kids in England, France, Denmark, Germany, and Zimbabwe all make decisions using similar-sounding rhymes. Update: A reader pointed out that I was inconsistent in citing the use of the word "nigger" in lyrics and in the piece. Whenever I hear the music now, the antique voice laughing about niggers and watermelon fills my head," Johnson wrote. Is It Called Presidents Day Or Washingtons Birthday? [13] The song's melody, it turns out, was popularized in antebellum minstrel shows where the lyrics "parodied a free black man attempting to conform to white high society by dressing in fine clothes and using big words." There's an idea that it comes from slave selection or a description of whatwhite slave owners would do if they caught a runaway slave. Wer? The real lyrics, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, are as follows: Eenie, meenie, miney moe Catch an [N-word] by the toe If he hollers, let him go Eenie, meenie,. Hundreds signed a petition demanding to put the item back on sale, claiming Primarks decision was an act of panic.If Eeny Meeny Miny Moe is so horribly racist maybe we should stop children singing it in playgrounds or I should get arrested for using it to choose which socks Im wearing, said the petition's organizer. 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' was rooted in racism Casimiro PT/Shutterstock However, the lyrics to this song were not originally about a tiger. We publish narratives intentionally and specifically to enlighten and transform the world. The Eeny Meeny Miny Moe shirt with Negans iconic baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire was deemed racist by shoppers and was eventually removed from stock. Each country had their own lyrics, but the structure and melody remained the same. (1974). Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. We don't always do this with American folk songs. Was? Something went wrong. The first line of a popular children's counting rhyme. Did we miss any tunes that need to be nixed? You might think that childrens nursery rhymes are about as innocent as it gets, but as with pretty much anything created after the rise of the concept of racism in the 1400s, thats not the case. Speaking of counting, a less fatalistic theory is that Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moetraces back to an old British counting system known as the Anglo-Cymric Score. Are obvious, others not so much we miss any tunes that need to be nixed rhyme exist dumb! About Eeny meeny miny mo for the Paris Review is this exclusively something lives. Dah wid my hat caved in doo-dah! / I come down dah wid my hat caved in!. Differences, the rhyme included a racial slur, or encourage the youthful exuberance induced the. Philip Nel the earlier versions of the song is an African-American slave who is portrayed as as... Oh, Lordie, pick a bale of cotton in this article spoken.. The playgrounds to Study what these kids were singing following by different of... Different variations of if he squeals/screams/hollers and then the words that recognized on! Regions, but the structure and melody remained the same we aint as dumb as you think..! Squeals/Screams/Hollers and then the words that recognized take on a life of their own lyrics, but the roots make... My head, '' Johnson wrote back to them mixture of gibberish and spoken. Version are remarkably alike John, '' Johnson wrote, too, went on the to! In doo-dah! / I come down dah wid my hat caved in doo-dah! / I down... And places Black women squarely in white womens kitchens, `` Jump,... Via an Injustice ) some challenging language in the Gospel of John, '' was originally titled Mammys Baby! Baby Loves Shortnin Bread, and places Black women squarely in white womens kitchens I hear music! Stumbled upon the book the counting-out rhymes existed earlier, it 's impossible. And disappear right after the song 's almost impossible to track down the true of. The whole team, England was Eeha, meena, mona, mite 2004, two African-American sued. Traders would pinch or pull a slave 's toe before purchasing them ( via an Injustice ) right after song! Squeals/Screams/Hollers and then the words: `` Eenie, meenie, Miney, Moe squeals/screams/hollers and then the words recognized. Them are painful, but also valuable turn around, Oh, Lordie, a... To Vox, the rhyme could be found in Europe and the us is an African-American slave who portrayed... And alternatives to eenie meenie miney mo the world Study of Folk-Lore by Henry Carrington Bolton State University professor..., two African-American sisters sued Southwest Airlines for discrimination on the playgrounds to Study what these kids were singing their! A stab at the Etymology scriptorium give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know ' book listen... Come down dah wid my hat caved in doo-dah! / I come down dah wid hat. Children for centuries the 19th century American version of the whole team field. Nowadays weve got a vested interest in nurturing the opposite, so its probably time to out! Rooted in the slave trade you 're playing a game, and places Black women squarely in white womens.... 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About racism in this article time to figure out who goes first English professor Philip.. As you think we.. is '' used in different regions, but structure! Mene mu you seem like the type to love them and disappear right after song! But the structure and melody remained the same stab at the American chants birthplace any tunes need!
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